The Marriage Portrait(86)
He is regarding her, intrigued, still clapping. “You are right,” he says, surprised. “I had not thought of that. They do have an extraordinary ability to go from a low register to a high one. It is a skill unique to their kind.”
“Their kind?”
“They are evirati. I ordered them especially from Rome. They are trained, most rigorously, from a very young age, even before they undergo…” He makes an indecipherable gesture with his outstretched fingers. “It produces a voice extraordinarily pure, with unprecedented range. Their vocal cords are those of a young boy, in a body the size of a man.”
In a rush, she understands. She has read about such customs in the ancient world but had no idea it happened in her own. She feels colour invade her face, while a peculiar suffocating sensation grips her throat. She glances quickly at the figures by the candelabra—their long, slender wrists, their smooth and ageless faces. She cannot help but picture them as small children, about to be operated on, without knowing what was ahead. What pain and shock they must have suffered, all for the whim of a wealthy man, what helplessness and confusion. Did they have any choice? Who would perform such a procedure?
The room is falling silent; people are resuming their seats, their whispered conversations. The singers are preparing for another song.
As the first phrases of the music float out over their heads, Alfonso reaches out and covers her hand, resting on the tabletop, with his own. Her disquiet at the enforced gelding of the evirati, treated no better than performing animals, battles for a moment with the simplicity of this gesture, its heartfelt nature.
Alfonso’s hand dropping on to hers like this, its fingers curling around hers, carries enormous, significant weight. For her it means he must love her, must feel for her—but also for the entire room, the gathered assembly. To do this, here, in front of his whole court, with all his friends and associates and courtiers and guardsmen and servants and artists and musicians and poets looking on, is a statement, a message, of commitment and love, and also perhaps renewal. Maybe she, the new Duchess, can heal the rift in this court caused by the old Duchess, its evident instability and unhappiness, the religious schism, the attempted annexation of her daughters, the absent sister?
Resplendent in her bridal dress, Lucrezia sits with her hand in that of her husband. She is so pierced by happiness that she believes she must be glowing, like a lantern in the darkness. Someone loves her—a man, a powerful and erudite man. She has invoked and inspired love in the heart of a duke: she, Lucrezia. More than anything, she wishes she could write this down, for Isabella, for anyone to read: He took my hand at dinner, in front of the whole court. She sees Nunciata noticing, and looking away. She sees the woman with the birds in her hair cast a brief, stabbing glance at their joined hands, then whisper something in her companion’s ear, her pretty vixen face distorted by ire and envy. She sees that the man who ate the fig is now picking at his teeth with a small chicken bone. She sees Nunciata plucking at the sleeve of the poet, who, with a weary courtesy, leans towards her to hear what she is saying. She sees Elisabetta moving along the far edge of the room, weaving through the chairs and seated guests, making her way past a figure standing beside a pillar. It is a uniformed soldier: Ercole Contrari, the head of the guardsmen, to whom Lucrezia was introduced an hour or so ago. She recognises his moustache, his handsome, even-featured face. He is leaning with one arm on the pillar, and as Elisabetta passes, his body inclines towards hers. He murmurs something but Elisabetta affects not to have heard him, turning her face resolutely towards the room, the tables, the rows and rows of guests. Lucrezia sees, however, that Contrari’s hand extends, and it holds, between its fingers, a folded piece of paper, which Elisabetta, twisting her arm up and behind her back, plucks from him, quickly, deftly, and conceals up her wide, tapering sleeve, and then she moves on, as if nothing at all has taken place. It is an act so smooth, so practised, yet so charged with danger, for him and for her, that Lucrezia’s breath leaves her chest. Lucrezia swivels her eyes towards Alfonso, but he is still focusing on the singers; she swivels them back to Elisabetta, who is taking a seat across the room, next to some cousins, and her face has an air of calm but her eyes—her eyes!—are alight with a treacherous, beguiling happiness.
The evirati tilt back their heads, open their throats, and pour forth notes that soar to the ceiling like the arrow-winged swallows who flit along the surface of the moat.
* * *
Later that night, long after the feast has been eaten, after the revellers have left the state room, have taken to their beds, after the servants have cleared the tables, washed the dishes, pans and spits, swept the tiles, after everyone in the walls of the castello has gone to their chambers, Alfonso falls asleep in Lucrezia’s bed, his arm clamped around her.
She lies beneath its weight until she is sure he is deeply asleep, then eases out from under it, sliding a cushion into her place, so as not to wake him. She is just about to push her way through the curtains when she is jerked backwards by the hair and, for a horrifying moment, she thinks he has seized it and is dragging her back to bed.
But when she turns, she sees that he still sleeps, his all-seeing eyes closed, his hands uncurled. The ends of her hair are trapped between his torso and the mattress.
Lucrezia eases them out, freeing herself, strand by strand.
In the other room, a silver crepuscular glimmer lies low on the floor. She tiptoes through it, fancying that her feet will become stained by its luminous glow, that by morning she will discover she has left tell-tale bright footprints behind.